Ever since the sports thread wars I have sensed a special connection between [edit] & Wile. Like the connection oil has to water. I almost can't speak of it. Wait....my eyes are misting. ~asqLet’s just stay together and tell the world to kiss our ass. ~P

It disturbs me that a father would be so obsessed with his daughter's sex life that he would kill her to protect the family "honor". It smacks of jealousy (like something a spurned lover would do) not honor.

I found it disturbing that the results of her autopsy showing she was still a virgin were released to the public. Even in death, she was judged by the state of her hymen. No privacy. No common decency. No respect. No rights.

this nauseates me. it stupefies me that this sort of mindset still exists, but it shouldn't. it's the sort of thing that eats away at your hopeful side. the trouble is, in many places, an act like this - or at the very least the attitudes that are at the root of it - are the norm rather than the exception. i wish the women's movement had a dr. king.

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics - Thomas Sowell

One of my anthropology professors has a couple of stories about honor killings on his website:

Family Honor and Abuse
>A conversation with an Afghan woman in St Louis who has been working in a clinic that seeks to help people recover from the trauma of war in their home countries. Many of the women have indeed been deeply traumatized by events that took place in their homeland. My contact has been surprised, however, at how many of the Afghan women have been traumatized by their own relatives. Events behind the compound walls can be deeply wounding. An example: A Pushtun woman from one of the eastern provinces had resisted allowing herself to be tattooed, a practice required of married women in that region. Eventually her husband’s family, with whom she was living, lost patience with her and forced her to be tattooed. Her mother-in-law bound her hands and they restrained her as they tattooed the telltale marks on her face – four dots on her forehead and dots above and below her lips. The instrument was apparently septic and it caused her face to swell up; she was unable to eat for days. She survived but was deeply shaken by the ordeal. In her clinical sessions here she repeatedly expressed remorse and shame that she was tattooed. Eventually, the clinician came to realize how deeply the experience was to her, and was able to arrange for the tattoo to be removed by cosmetic surgery.

>When I was living in Kabul in the 1950s I was single and fresh out of college. Across the street lived a family with three children, about the ages of 13, 12, 11. The 11 year old was a very pretty girl, I thought. The father was a lower echelon diplomat in the Foreign Ministry; he had in fact been assigned to Washington for a couple of years; I remember his explaining to me how perceptive Muhammad had been to forbid the consumption of pork, as it turned out to be especially vulnerable to disease in hot climates. After I left Kabul I lost track of the family. Years later I met a young woman of the same name as the pretty 11 year old daughter of the diplomat I had known across the street in Kabul. I happened to ask her if she could have known that girl, as they were about the same age. She said she did know her and told me what had happened to her: She had gone to Kabul University after graduating from high school and there she fell in love with a young man and they eloped. Eventually she returned home to see her family. With her in the house her father turned up the stereo so that the neighbors would not hear what he would do, and he then shot her dead. Family honor.

I'm not going to defend the man for murdering, but I do want to explain WHY they think killing is the solution, being Middle Eastern and knowing how people think, I know what the murderer was thining.

Whoever just mentioned something about virginity not being important, I don't know if you've heard of this but losing your virginity before marriage is one of the biggest sins, and people in the ME take traditions and religion pretty seriously.

Now in Islam, there is a punishment for premarital sex, but people feel that that punishment isn't going to do anyhting for their "honor" so they kill.

In the ME, a man will almost never marry a woman if she's not a virgin (except if she was married before). And marriage is pretty important. Almost every man and woman want to get married. This girl who lost her virginity ruined the chance for her sisters/cousins/even brothers to get married because this family is a "bad" family.

Now that's not the important thing. The important thing is that the family's reputation will be ****. What I mean by **** is that when the father enters a cofee shop, people will stare, people will laugh, people will look at him in disgust. It means when his brother goes to his college or school his friends will make fun of him because his sister's a slut, and that his mother is probably one too and her father's probably a p!mp. And when her sister goes to her school/college/whatever, all her friends will run away from her so that they won't get a bad reputation by sitting with her. She'll be walking and everyone would be whispering/laughing...etc at her. Guys would pass by and say really rude comments. Do you know how a person gets a bad reputation for being a terrorist in the US, and everyone runs away from them? Well, it's the same thing if a girl slept with a guy without marriage. Even if the man moves away to another continent, people will still talk about him.

So what does this man do to prove to people that he does not accept his daughter's behavior and so that his other daughters and sons may have a chance in marriage?

He kills his daughter.

So that even if he'll go to jail and spend the rest of his life there, maybe his sons'friends won't say that his mother a prostitute and that his daughter will have friends.

Again, I'm not defending him, what he did was wrong, but I'm trying to explain why people think certain ways. However weird they are.

Oh yes, I would also like to add that if the "conservative lawmakers" were as religious as they thought they were, they would need to kill the father also, since the punishment for murdering without reason in Islam is death.

so what happens to the family honor if a man loses his virginity before marriage (or has extra-marital relations) ?

(obviously this is primarily rhetorical, but i'm still interested in hearing the answer).

m

I've been told by women whose countries of origin have a tradition of honor killings (though their families certainly didn't practice it) that the men are also *expected* to be killed, but usually are not found out. And if they are, they're given an excuse. The first part happens because men don't have hymens and can't get pregnant, and the second is of course the virulently misogynistic patriarchal system.

Are you asking about the "punishment" or what happens to the family honor?

If it's about the "family honor" and the man isn't married, I don't think much really happens to the "family honor." The problem occurs when this man wants to get married, where some people don't mind, some people do. He would probably only dream of marrying a rich girl from a high class family if he had that kind of reputation though, nontheless, he probably will marry, except not his dream girl, which of course is a beautiful virgin from a high class family.

I'm not really sure what happens to the "family honor" if he's married and is cheating on his wife, but I'm sure that the consequences of this will be much more serious. Anyway, if he's married and sleeping with another woman, he's supposed to be stoned to death (In Islam, there are only 3 cases where a person's punishment is death: If he/she kills, if he/she converts, or if he/she sleeps with someone else while married), so either way, he should be dead.

Do you actually think they'll leave the man alone if they find out that he slept with his daughter/sister/wife..etc?

There have been many real stories where the family finds out and they do murder the guy, but they usually don't go parading around saying who they slept with.

ETA: I don't know if any of you misunderstood, but nor the woman nor the man should be killed if they aren't married, so just as much as the girl shouldn't be killed,same goes for the guy. I also wanted to add that any girl who does this really is stupid because she knows what kind of society she lives in and what harsh consequences she'll face, and that the person who slept with her is probably boasting to his friends rather than getting attacked by his family.

Shouldn't there be a price for taking a woman's virginity outside of marriage? Shouldn't he in fact lose his life for taking a family's honor?

I know that because you're a female, therefore you're defending the female, but...The way you're talking sounds as if the woman is stupid and doesn't know what consequences she'll face if she willingly slep with a man. If this woman knows how to have sex, then she also knows that his family won't do much to him if they found out. She has not been raped, she willingly agreed to sleeping with him, so IMO, she's to blame for destroying her own "family honor".

He's responsible for his family honor, not her's. He didn't rape her.

ETA:

For premarital or extra-marital sex, the punishment for both males and females is actually the same. (public flogging for premarital, and death for extra-marital).

Thanks for adding that. I wanted to explain that but only know how to say it in Arabic (the "flogging" )

Shouldn't there be a price for taking a woman's virginity outside of marriage? Shouldn't he in fact lose his life for taking a family's honor?

I know that because you're a female, therefore you're defending the female, but...The way you're talking sounds as if the woman is stupid and doesn't know what consequences she'll face if she willingly slep with a man. If this woman knows how to have sex, then she also knows that his family won't do much to him if they found out. She has not been raped, she willingly agreed to sleeping with him, so IMO, she's to blame for destroying her own "family honor".

He's responsible for his family honor, not her's. He didn't rape her.

Isn't it true that under Islamic law a rape victim must produce several Muslim male witnesses to the act in order for it to be considered rape? Otherwise, it's just extramarital sex. Surely no man who wants to rape a woman is stupid enough to do it in front of witnesses.

To Trenell, MizKerri and geeky:
I pray none of you ever has to live in a communist state.

Geeky is my hero. She's the true badass. The badass who doesn't even need to be a badass. There aren't enough O's in cool to describe her.

Isn't it true that under Islamic law a rape victim must produce several Muslim male witnesses to the act in order for it to be considered rape? Otherwise, it's just extramarital sex. Surely no man who wants to rape a woman is stupid enough to do it in front of witnesses.

I *believe* to prove any sexual relations outside marriage, witnesses must be produced (doesn't have to be male witnesses).